SELMA: 50 YEARS

Monroe Gallery of Photography

Booth #203  Photo LA

January 15 - 18, 2015

 

Monroe Gallery of Photography will be exhibiting a specially selected collection of civil rights photographs from the 1956 Selma March to Ferguson, Missouri and present day in booth #119

during the AIPAD Photography Show April 16 - 19, 2015.

All photographs by Steve Schapiro

Onlookers watch the Selma-to-Montgomery march pass thru

Montgomery, 1965

On the Road, the Selma March, 1965

"Vote", Selma March,1965

Boy with Flag, Selma March, 1965

Flag, Selma March, 1965

Martin Luther King Marching for Voting Rights with John Lewis, Reverend Jesse Douglas,

James Forman and Ralph Abernathy, Selma, 1965

Martin Luther King, Selma, Alabama, 1965

Martin Luther King, Selma, Alabama, 1965

Martin Luther King, Jr., (Megaphone), Selma, Alabama, 1965

Rosa Parks, Selma March, 1965

Martin Luther King, Andrew Young, John Lewis, Selma, 1965

Entering Montgomery, Selma March, 1965

Entering Montgomery, Selma March, 1965

Girls Watching the Selma March, Alabama, 1965

Selma Marchers Wrapped in Plastic to Protect Against the

 Rain, 1965

Related: The New Yorker: The Long Road From Selma to Montgomery

Alabama bus boycott organizer, professor dies at 96

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) -- Thelma McWilliams Glass, a longtime professor and civil rights pioneer who helped organize the Montgomery bus boycott, died on Wednesday. She was 96.

A statement from Alabama State University, where Glass was a professor of geography, said she died but did not give a cause.

"The ASU family lost one of its crown jewels today," said President William H. Harris. "Mrs. Glass was the consummate educator, whose life was a shining example of service, courage and commitment. She will be truly missed."

Glass was one of a group of women who helped put together the bus boycott in Montgomery in 1955. The effort came together after Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person.

The boycott by blacks in the city crippled the bus service and helped bring an end to segregation of public transportation in the South a year later. Glass was secretary of the Women's Political Council, a group that spread the word through the black community in Montgomery about the boycott.

"The men talked about it, you know, but we were ready to take action," Glass said during a recent interview with ASU Today Magazine.

Instead of riding buses, boycotters organized carpools to get to where they were going. Or they walked.

Glass also was an educator for 40 years, building a reputation for instilling in her students a desire to learn and become involved in the fight to end racial inequality.

Glass has an auditorium named after her in Trenholm Hall at Alabama State University - her alma mater. The university honored Glass with the Black and Gold Standard Award during the 2011 Founders' Day Convocation.

Glass was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. She was also honored in 2011 by the National Alumni Association with the Harper Councill Trenholm Memorial Award.

Funeral arrangements for Glass have yet to be announced.

© 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

Related: People Get Ready: The Struggle for Human Rights

Freedom Riders museum opens in Montgomery, Alabama

Paul Schutzer: Freedom Riders Julia Aaron & David Dennis sitting on board interstate bus as they and 25 others are escorted by 2 National Guardsmen holding bayonets, on way from Montgomery, AL to Jackson, MS, May, 1961

The Associated Press

Friday, May 20, 2011
4:43 a.m.

Montgomery's former Greyhound Bus Station is reopening as a museum honoring the Freedom Riders on the 50th anniversary of the day they were attacked in the capital city.

The Alabama Historical Commission has prepared the museum in downtown Montgomery and says several of the original Freedom Riders, including Georgia Rep. John Lewis, are scheduled to attend the dedication at 10 a.m. Friday. (Full schedule here.)

The Freedom Riders were trying to integrate Southern bus stations when they arrived in Montgomery on May 20, 1961. They were beaten by an angry white mob because no law enforcement officers were on hand.

The new museum is a few blocks from some of Montgomery's other civil rights attractions, including the Rosa Parks Library, the Civil Rights Memorial and the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church.



----On the 50th anniversary of a night when a savage mob trapped Riders and others in a church in Montgomery, Alabama -- with no guarantee that they would not torch the church and everyone inside -- LIFE.com looks back at one of the most terrifying, and pivotal, moments

55 YEARS AGO: ROSA PARKS ARRESTED IN MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA

Steve Schapiro: Rosa Parks, Montgomery, 1965

December 1, 1955 - The birth of the modern American civil rights movement occurred as Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat to a white man and move to the back section of a municipal bus. Her arrest resulted in a year-long boycott of the city bus system by African Americans and led to legal actions ending racial segregation on municipal buses throughout the South. Her quiet courageous act changed America, its view of black people and redirected the course of history.

"I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free... so other people would be also free. "

- Rosa Parks


After her arrest, Parks she called local labor organizer E. D. Nixon to bail her out. The next day, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, more than 40 other black ministers and a white minister named the Rev. Robert Graetz formed the Montgomery Improvement Association. They organized the bus boycott that began on Dec. 5 and lasted until December 20, 1956, when a U.S. Supreme Court ruling integrated the public transportation system.

More: Official website of Rosa Parks